Harry stopped in the doorway and examined the group scattered in the living room. His eyes zeroed in very quickly on Thor who sat next to Captain America and talked animatedly with wild gestures. Next his eyes wandered to Clint Barton who was perched on an elevated platform Harry guessed to be only two square foot. Lastly his gaze fell onto the Black Widow and Dr. Banner who talked in low voices a bit away from the group. Harry frowned when he realized they talked in a foreign language he had never heard before but understood nonetheless. With a shake of his head he entered the room, Tony and Pepper who had caught up with him following close behind.

All eyes were on him the second they noticed him and Harry subconsciously stood straighter and let his arms fall beside his torso.
Harry saw recognition in Clint's eyes who immediately fell into a defensive stance.

"You!" he hissed.

"Yes, me. I am no threat, I was there as much out of free will as you."

Clint's tense position relaxed – just a tiny bit.

"I'm sorry to hear that but I still don't trust you. I don't know you."

Harry nodded in response, as an auror he could respect that. He turned to Thor who had eyed him with narrowed eyes throughout the whole conversation. Then recognition sparked in his eyes too, a different kind than with Clint.

"By Odin!" Thor exclaimed and then did something that took the whole room – maybe except Harry – by surprise.
The great Thor, the Nordic god, fell to one knee and bowed his head in respect.

"I did not know she had chosen a master. It is an honour to meet you."

What Harry did in response to that might have shocked the Avengers even more.

"Thor Odinson, the time for you to kneel in front of me has not yet come. And I hope when it comes you will greet me as an old friend and not in fear. We are equals, we are brothers."

Thor's head shot up in confusion and Harry revealed the collar beneath his jacket.
Thor's eyes grew sad.

"My congratulations and my condolences."

"Okay, what the fuck is going on?"

Tony sounded positively irritated by now and all other occupants of the room seemed to want some explanations too.
Harry sighed and flashed a crooked grin.

"I guess I owe you guys some explanations, huh?"

"Hell, yes, you do!" Tony was quick to agree.

Harry silently removed the jacket and sat down on the couch next to Thor on the other side as Captain America.

"Well, what do you know already?" Harry asked with a curious look.

"What?! Uhm, what – what do you mean?"

Tony actually fidgeted at the question. Mirth danced in Harry's eyes.

"You don't want to tell me Tony Stark didn't do a complete background search on the stranger he found in his bed?"

"In his bed?" Natasha intercepted, amusement clear in her voice.

"Long story" Harry waved the question off and turned back to Tony. "So?" He gestured for him to go on.

"Your full name is Harry James Potter, you were born on July 31st 1980 to James Potter and Lily Potter nee Evans and attended school until the age of eleven. You are a British citizen and holder of a driver's license. You have an allowance to be in the U.S. and you have a bank account with a London bank. Your father doesn't exist and your mother vanished after her eleventh birthday from all records until her death in October 1981. That's it. Nothing else was to be found about you."

Harry seemed surprised.

"They actually put my dad on my birth certificate? I thought they knew better… Given, it is fake, but still."

"Wait a sec, your birth certificate is fake?"

Harry shrugged at Tony's question.

"Yeah. I mean, it is correct except for place of birth, but yes, it is fake. Didn't get one when I was born for reasons I will elaborate later but I needed one to start school."

By now everyone was staring at him with wide eyes.

"A full explanation. Right now," demanded Tony.

Harry sighed.

"Alright. I guess the Statute can be ignored for you, you already know so much, and I am Harry Potter, for Merlin's sake!"

No one missed his bitter tone.

"Before I start with who I am and why I am here, there's something you all need to know. It is the reason why Loki took an interest in me and also how I was able to regain my memories of the past few days that I was under his control."

Thor smiled at him knowingly but he also looked a little worried.

"Are you sure? Considering their experiences of the past 48 hours this might not be a good idea, young seiðr."

Harry knew he shouldn't be able to understand and much less speak Old Norse but that one word made him switch languages without a conscious thought.

"They have to know, Thor. And I can defend myself should they not take friendly to it."

"I do not doubt that. You have my support."

Harry gave Thor a grateful smile and then furrowed his brows in confusion.

"I did it again…" he murmured to himself and glanced at his tattoo. Was that the reason why? He shook himself out of his stupor looked at the Avengers with a critical eye.

"What I am about to tell you requires an oath of secrecy from you. You cannot speak about this to anyone who doesn't already know. Do you swear on your life?"

Thor was first to answer with a confident "I do". The others followed a bit more reluctantly. Once all had answered with an affirmative the oath took effect and a golden glow encompassed them all, tying their life to the vow they had just taken.

"What the hell was that?!" Natasha hissed and fell into a defensive stance. She even pulled out a knife from somewhere and Clint did the same. Tony, Pepper and Dr. Banner stood there completely baffled and Captain America seemed unsure what to do for Thor just chuckled in good humour.

"I must say, young seiðr, I did not expect that. You just tricked us all into a binding oath!"

Harry shrugged with a smirk. "The Statute of Secrecy exists for a reason and though I will tell them I can't risk them telling Fury. Not even I could escape Azkaban after that stunt." He then turned to the completely confused Avengers and simply said "That was magic."

"Magic doesn't exist!" was Tony quick to deny.

Clint snorted.

"Yeah, and Loki's illusions and teleportation were all our imagination."

"It might just have been. Mind magic is intricate and not many have the control and power to do so. I myself have not. At least not until recently. Now I am not sure…"

Harry's statement was met with wide eyes and even one or two dropped jaws.

"So, you want to tell us that magic like Loki's is real and you can wield it too?" Tony's hand balled into a fist, ready for a fight.

"Yes and no" Harry mused "Loki's magic is real, but I cannot wield it. My magic is completely different, bound to wording and intent, while Loki's magic centres around illusion, mind and will."

"So, you are basically a wizard? With a wand and spells and a pointy hat?" Tony asked in his typical blunt way.

"And flying broomsticks and potion brewing" Harry confirmed with a smile. "And the reason I tricked you into a magical binding vow so you literally can't tell anyone who doesn't know yet is that there are millions of people like me. We call ourselves witches and wizards and we live in a society parallel to yours. We call people without magic 'muggles', at least in Britain. Here in the US they say 'No-Maj'. You may have heard about the witch hunts and trials back in history? That's the reason we went into hiding and the Statute of Secrecy came into effect. Muggles cannot know about us without a valid reason: marriage to a wizard or witch, a magical child being born to muggles, people who came into contact with magic and are vouched for to be trusted with the truth and, of course, the respective heads of state. The Queen and the Prime Minister of Britain know about us, for example. They are in frequent contact with the British Minister of Magic."

Silence fell across the room as the Avengers digested all the new information they were just given. Thor shot Harry an encouraging smile. Tony, quick thinker that he was, came to the correct conclusion.

"So, I couldn't find your father because he was born into this parallel society and lived his live without real contact to ours?"

Harry nodded, the faint throbbing of grief still present whenever thinking about his parents and all the others he had lost. Tony's brows furrowed.

"What about your mother? Why have her records stopped at age eleven? If she met your father, married him and lived with him in… "

He pondered on the right wording. "What do you call your society? Always saying 'parallel society' gets confusing."

"The Wizarding World."

"Right. If she lived with him in the Wizarding World after marrying him, her records would stop somewhere in her adulthood. But she barely reached it, dying at age 21."

Harry nodded with a sad smile.

"You're right. My mother was a witch, a muggle-born witch, born to two non-magical parents. A wizard's or witch's magical core develops in their childhood and manifests in bursts of accidental magic, like floating toys or summoning a bottle towards themselves. At age eleven their magical core is stable enough to give it a controlled outlet. Age eleven is the earliest age one can acquire a wand. School for magical children starts for them in September after their eleventh birthday and covers seven years of schooling. Five of those years are the minimum required to gain the right of wielding a wand, that graduation is called the O.W.L.s. A wizard or witch is considered an adult with their seventeenth birthday. Most students turn seventeen in der sixth year or in the summer before their seventh year of schooling at the end of which are the N.E.W.T.s, another level of graduation you can achieve. The N.E.W.T.s give you access to higher positions or better professions as well as further studying. My mother's records as well as my own stop at age eleven because we were introduced to the Wizarding World and went to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. A boarding school, by the way, and the only Wizarding School in Britain. America has more because it is so big, there's Ilvermorny, the Salem Institute and more that I don't know of. Hogwarts, together with Beauxbatons in France and Durmstrang somewhere in the North-East, are the best and most well-known schools in Europe."

Natasha nodded slowly. "You have schools and you said earlier Great Britain has a Minister of Magic. So, you have a government, laws and such institutions as well?"

"Yes. There are the aurors, the magical police you could say. I myself am one, actually. We have regular elections, different political parties, law courts, different departments in the government that have specialized on one specific part of the legislation and almost every country on earth has such institutions. America, for example, has the M.A.C.U.S.A, the Magical Congress of the United States of America. There is even an international institution, the ICW, the International Confederation of Wizards."

"What does an auror do?" Clint asked curiously.

"Mostly paperwork" Harry laughed. "When I signed up for the Auror Program I thought it would have a little more action. But we basically investigate crimes committed by or on wizards. We also work together with a Division called the Obliviators. Those are wizards and witches that are called when magic was exposed to muggles that shouldn't know about it. They are specialized in memory charms."

"You can change or erase memories?!" Dr. Banner exclaimed.

"Yes" Harry confirmed. "Memory charms are very delicate and very much illegal to use without admission from the Wizengamot. The Obliviators are one of the best supervised divisions of all."

"Okay, so magical people live parallel to us with governments and all that shit. But the real question is: What can you do?" Tony's eyes shone with childish excitement and the others too looked curious. Some were just better at hiding it than others.

Harry grinned mischievously.

"The better question is what we can't do. Magic opens so many possibilities and with enough magical power, almost everything is possible."

Stunned face looked at him in wonder.

"Okay then, what can't you do?" Tony obviously wanted answers.

"We can't bring back the dead. There are spells to raise dead bodies into a zombie like state and there is one object that lets you speak with the dead for a limited time but it can make you go insane. The dead are to stay dead. Well, except vampires and ghosts. But Vampires are undead and ghosts just have unresolved issues." Harry rambled on.

"We haven't yet found a permanent cure for cancer, sadly. But aside from that we can cure pretty much any injury or illness. One can't go back in time more than five hours and even that is extremely dangerous. And you would first have to build a Time-Turner for currently there are none in existence. Let's see, what else… Oh, yeah, while we can do instant transportation, we call it 'apparition', there is a limit to the distance. The greater the distance, the greater the risk of bodily harm or even death. But there are other means to travel, Portkey or the Floo-Network for example."

Stunned silence filled the room. Harry fiddled unconsciously with the collar waiting for the 'verdict'.

It was Tony who broke the silence.

"Wow. And how do you fit into all that? From what I understand both your parents lived in the Wizarding World and you were born into it. I guess that's why your birth certificate is fake. But why you even needed one and grew up with this Dursley-family is beyond me."

"Petunia Dursley is the sister of my mother. Both my mother and my father died in 1981 when I was 15 months old so I lived with the relatives of my mother. I needed the birth certificate for school. I actually never knew I was a wizard until I got a letter from Hogwarts on my 11th birthday. It was not the first either, the Dursleys tried to deny me my heritage, they did not like magic."

A dark look crossed his face. Bruce inquired:

"Wouldn't the relatives of your father have been the better choice then? I would guess that they were magical too or at least knew about magic and could have raised you aware of your heritage."

Harry nodded slowly.

"You are right. Though my father's parents had already died at that time I had a distant relative not by blood but by marriage, a witch, that would gladly have taken me in. She was married to a muggleborn wizard and had a daughter. But there were circumstances that required me to live with blood relatives of my mother. There was a war. A wizard who had fashioned himself the identity of Voldemort was terrorizing the Wizarding World of Britain. He believed in the superiority of wizards and magical blood as opposed to muggles and wanted to subjugate those he believed to be of dirty blood. The war was at its height in 1980 when a prophecy was made-"

"Wait a second-a fucking prophecy?!" Tony spluttered.

"Yes, a prophecy. A real one at that, though rather self-fulfilling. Quick foray: a seer can speak a prophecy which is then recorded in the Department of Mysteries where the Unspeakables try to decipher who or what is meant. There are three types of prophecies: The Unstable Prophecies, the Self-fulfilling Prophecies and the True Prophecies. The Unstable Prophecies are too vague to be ever confirmed as having been fulfilled or simply never come to pass. The Self-fulfilling Prophecies can only come to pass if someone hears them and then chooses to act upon that knowledge or believes them to be True ones. The True Prophecies are the most reliable because they will always come to pass. They are unavoidable. So, in the early months of 1980 a prophecy was spoken that told of a boy being born at the end of July that would have the power to destroy the Dark Lord. Voldemort who went by that title heard that part, the first part, of it from a spy and came to the conclusion that the boy of the prophecy was me and that I would have to die before I grew up to be a threat."

Natasha looked incredulous.

"Not only did he act upon a prophecy, but an incomplete one? It could have said anything in that second part! That the boy had the power but would use it to aid him or that going after the boy would be what destroys him!"

"His sanity had long since left him," Harry said dryly. "And indeed, the second part was important. The full prophecy was The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches … born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives … the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"

A moment of silence followed Harry's words, then he cleared his throat and continued.

"On Halloween of 1981 Voldemort came to our house and killed my father, then my mother. He actually gave her a chance to step aside, she did not have to die, but she chose to stand in front of me and die in my stead. He tried to kill me, but the curse backfired and he was reduced to a bodyless wraith. I grew up without knowledge about the Wizarding World with my Aunt and her family. I had to live with blood-relatives of my mum to keep the magic of her sacrifice alive. As long as I lived with her blood, Voldemort and his followers, the Death Eaters, could not find me. About two months before my eighteenth birthday I fulfilled the prophecy and killed him. The war had cost many people their life and it all came to an end in what is now known as the Battle of Hogwarts."

Faces flashed in front of Harry's eyes, his parents, Cedric, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, Fred… he blinked away the moisture gathering in his eyes and focused on the Avengers again. Their eyes were filled with sadness and understanding, but thankfully no pity. Thor gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze and Harry smiled.

"Anyway, now that the existence of magic and the basics of my life are covered, let's get to the part where Loki takes an interest in me, shall we?"

Not giving them a chance to say anything Harry quickly continued.

"I was in New York following a lead on a murder case when I literally stumbled into Loki's secret lair. I was in a tunnel system underneath the city, parts of which are connected to the underground railway, that, according to my source, was also connected to our main suspects house - without being restricted through wards. Long story short, I took a wrong turn and found myself in Loki's camp. I was completely taken by surprise and before I knew it basically everyone had a gun pointed at me. Someone actually shot at me, hit my shoulder and I, well, I stumbled and fell over. I hit my head on the edge of a table and…"

Harry grinned sheepishly and rubbed his neck.

"And I, uh, died, kind of?"

For the second time that day the sight of six dropped jaws greeted him.

AN: Thank you for all the feedback I got! This story will have 5 parts in total, and I hope that the next parts will be uploaded in the next two weeks. I have it all planned out. But part four is not yet completely written and part five not even started, so there might be some minor delays. I promise to work quickly though! But I am also kind of a perfectionist, soo...

Btw, I have no beta, so I apologize for any mistakes. Feel free to point them out^^